Grok Imagine Video 1.5
xAI's video model with native audio, plus a Lite distillation priced from $0.02 per second.
Quick verdict
- Best for
- Developers adding cheap short video to apps
- Pricing
- Lite from about $0.02 per second (480p) to $0.14 (1080p); full model $4.20/min per launch coverage
- Not ideal if
- Lite trades quality for speed; 1080p is upscaled 720p
What is Grok Imagine Video 1.5?
Grok Imagine Video 1.5 is xAI's text-to-video and image-to-video model with native audio, available through the API since mid-2026 and rolling out to X Premium tiers. In early October 2026 xAI added Grok Imagine Video 1.5 Lite, a faster, cheaper distillation that generates 1 to 15-second clips at 480p, 720p, and upscaled 1080p, priced from about $0.02 per second at 480p to $0.14 at 1080p according to gateway listings, and available through OpenRouter and Vercel AI Gateway.
Key features
- Text-to-video and image-to-video with native audio
- Lite variant: 1–15 s clips at 480p/720p/1080p
- Per-second API pricing
- Available via xAI API, OpenRouter, and Vercel AI Gateway
- Image generation sibling in Grok Imagine
Pros
- Among the cheapest per-second video pricing published
- Native audio in one pass
- Broad gateway availability
Cons
- Lite trades quality for speed; 1080p is upscaled 720p
- Release dates and prices come from gateway listings, not an xAI announcement
- Shorter clips than the 30-second Chinese models
Best for
Read more
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Alternatives to Grok Imagine Video 1.5
Grok Imagine
xAI's image and video generator, bundled into Grok and X, with far looser content moderation.
Kling 4.0
Kuaishou's next video model: 30-second 4K clips steered by up to 10 keyframes, Flash out first.
MiniMax H3
A general multimodal video model: text, image, video, and audio in, 15-second 2K clips with stereo out.